Refereed Journal Articles by Victor T Chen
Contexts, 2022
The upheaval of the last few years has sparked new conversations about the meaning of work. Even ... more The upheaval of the last few years has sparked new conversations about the meaning of work. Even as Covid devastated communities, endangered frontline workers, and disrupted supply chains, corporate profits and stock prices surged. As lockdowns upended workplaces, remote work became the norm in certain industries. Confronting this changed economic landscape, emboldened workers have organized new unions and staged widespread strikes, with public approval of labor unions soaring to highs not seen in six decades. Others have fiercely resisted management demands to return to the status quo. And since early 2021, millions of American workers have been voting with their feet and joining the so-called Great Resignation, a dramatic and prolonged spike in quit rates. Now is a pivotal moment, a blip of opportunity when people seem to be open to different ways of doing things. How might we reorganize economies so that they actually support the vast majority of people? How might we create stronger institutions to protect us against the array of existential threats we now face—which would include not just another pandemic, but also ongoing political instability, growing economic inequality, and the impending climate catastrophe? Clearly, broad economic policies that share an economy’s rewards more fairly and inclusively are critical. We also need to consider promising grassroots efforts to build better economic organizations—such as cooperatives and other participatory organizations where members exercise a greater say in how to run their groups.
Theory and Research in Education, 2022
We argue that the compelling critical perspective put forward by Michael Sandel in The Tyranny of... more We argue that the compelling critical perspective put forward by Michael Sandel in The Tyranny of Merit (2020) could benefit from the account of power that Cut Loose (2015) advanced in its earlier typology. First, the ways that principles of meritocracy serve the interests of particular social groups become clearer when we consider more fully the tensions that inherently exist between merit and other conceptions of the good. Second, the allure of these competing moral perspectives-above all, fraternal morality-helps us make sense of the turn toward nativist populism that we have seen in the U.S. and elsewhere. Amid the steady unraveling of religious and republican ties, a white working class has responded to its relative economic decline, in part, by seeking solace in ethnocentrism. Third, we argue that the morality of grace can offer an alternative source of existential meaning, which meritocracy-with its focus on contentless excellence-lacks, and which egalitarianism-with its materialist and secular viewpoint-often struggles to cultivate. Here, we turn to Sandel's earlier book, What Money Can't Buy (2013), for inspiration, seeing grace as not just the absence of a meritocratic ethic of merciless competition, but a source of value, fulfillment, and connection in itself. We end our essay with a description of what such an economy and politics of grace might look like.
Religions, 2017
This essay is adapted from a plenary talk the author gave at the “Growing Apart:
The Implication... more This essay is adapted from a plenary talk the author gave at the “Growing Apart:
The Implications of Economic Inequality” interdisciplinary conference at Boston College on 9 April 2016, as well as portions of his book Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy, a sociological ethnography based on interviews and observations of unemployed autoworkers in Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Canada, during and after the Great Recession. The essay discusses four themes from this research. First, it provides a sociological understanding of how long-term unemployment and economic inequality are experienced by today’s less advantaged workers. Second, it illustrates how social policy can improve their circumstances. Third, it examines the limits of policy, and how dealing with inequality also requires changing the broader culture. Fourth, it makes the case for one possible approach to bring about that cultural change: a morality of grace.
Books by Victor T Chen
University of California Press, 2015
Years after the Great Recession, the economy is still weak, and an unprecedented number of worker... more Years after the Great Recession, the economy is still weak, and an unprecedented number of workers have sunk into long spells of unemployment. Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy provides a vivid and moving account of the experiences of some of these men and women, through the example of a historically important group: autoworkers. Their well-paid jobs on the assembly lines built a strong middle class in the decades after World War II. But today, they find themselves beleaguered in a changed economy of greater inequality and risk, one that favors the well-educated—or well-connected.
Their declining fortunes in recent decades tell us something about what the white-collar workforce should expect to see in the years ahead, as job-killing technologies and the shipping of work overseas take away even more good jobs. Cut Loose offers a poignant look at how the long-term unemployed struggle in today’s unfair economy to support their families, rebuild their lives, and overcome the shame and self-blame they deal with on a daily basis. It is also a call to action—a blueprint for a new kind of politics, one that offers a measure of grace in a society of ruthless advancement.
Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 2021
Our everyday lives are structured by the rhythms, values, and practices of various organizations,... more Our everyday lives are structured by the rhythms, values, and practices of various organizations, including schools, workplaces, and government agencies. These experiences shape common-sense understandings of how “best” to organize and connect with others. Today, for-profit managerial firms dominate society, even though their practices often curtail information-sharing and experimentation, engender exploitation, and exclude the interests of stakeholders, particularly workers and the general public.
This Research in the Sociology of Organizations volume explores an expansive array of organizational imaginaries, or conceptions of organizational possibilities, with a focus on collectivist-democratic organizations that operate in capitalist markets but place more authority and ownership in the hands of stakeholders other than shareholders. These include worker and consumer cooperatives and other enterprises that, to varying degrees:
1. Emphasize social values over profit
2. Are owned not by shareholders but by workers, consumers, or other stakeholders
3. Employ democratic forms of managing their operations
4. Have social ties to the organization based on moral and emotional commitments
Organizational Imaginaries explores how these enterprises generate solidarity among members, network with other organizations and communities, contend with market pressures, and enhance their larger organizational ecosystems. By ensuring that organizations ultimately support and serve broader communities, collectivist-democratic organizing can move societies closer to hopeful “what if” and “if only” futures.
This volume is essential for researchers and students seeking innovative and egalitarian approaches to business and management.
Beacon Press, 2007
Fifty-four million Americans—including 21 percent of the nation’s children—live a notch above the... more Fifty-four million Americans—including 21 percent of the nation’s children—live a notch above the poverty line, and yet the challenges they face are largely ignored. While government programs assist the poor, and politicians woo the more fortunate, the “Missing Class” is largely invisible and left to fend for itself.
Missing Class parents often work at a breakneck pace to preserve the progress they have made and are but one divorce or unexpected hospitalization away from sliding into poverty. Children face an even more perilous and uncertain future because their parents have so little time to help them with their schoolwork or guide them during their adolescent years. With little supervision, the younger generation often flounders in school, sometimes falling prey to the same problems that are prevalent in the much poorer communities that border Missing Class neighborhoods. Paradoxically, the very efforts that enabled parents to get ahead financially often inhibit their children from advancing; they are in real danger of losing what little ground their parents have gained.
The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America is an urgent and timely exploration that describes-through the experiences of nine families-the unique problems faced by this growing class of people who are neither working poor nor middle class. Katherine S. Newman and Victor Tan Chen trace where these families came from, how they’ve struggled to make a decent living, and why they’re stuck without a safety net. An eloquent argument for the need to think about inequality in a broader way, The Missing Class has much to tell us about whether the American dream still exists for those who are sacrificing daily to achieve it.
Book Chapters by Victor T Chen
The Handbook of Equality of Opportunity, 2024
Drawing from Ursula K. Le Guin’s parable of the “child in the closet,” this chapter describes how... more Drawing from Ursula K. Le Guin’s parable of the “child in the closet,” this chapter describes how a dynamic of broadening equality and shifting extraction has played out across US history, as American conceptions of universal political rights have evolved. The “American dream,” a powerful expression of principles of equal opportunity, was only popularized in the twentieth century, yet its ideological origins can be traced to the republic’s founding documents. From the outset, bestowing rights and opportunities upon white male property owners depended on the subjugation of other groups. Over time, however, the American dream’s ideals—rooted in Jeffersonian philosophies of political equality—have provided moral leverage to push forward resistance and reform. Popular conceptions of the American dream have shifted, in turn, from desires for a freedom-loving and virtuous community to aspirations for individual material success. As the tenor of the dream has changed, so too have the moral arguments used to excuse the exploitation that permits the extending of opportunities more broadly. Racial entitlement, for instance, has been replaced by meritocratic entitlement, reflecting popular understandings of individual advancement and efficient markets as superior routes to economic growth benefitting all. Such a perspective distracts from the ongoing erosion of social mobility and the offloading of the costs of opportunity creation onto new and international groups. Recognizing these changing patterns of resource extraction and opportunity hoarding helps make sense of modern-day inequalities and the reasons they persist amid the uneven advancement of America’s founding ideals. It also offers insight into how the current system might allow for something different from a Faustian bargain of underwriting dreams of glory and self-growth for some upon the collateral suffering of an increasingly amorphous and obscure group of others. An alternative path would require not just positive liberties of economic security, but also a change in the prevailing cultural beliefs of who is deserving and undeserving of grace.
Russell Sage Foundation and Harvard University Press, 2006
This chapter will consider the folk knowledge that low-wage workers have of labor economics—what ... more This chapter will consider the folk knowledge that low-wage workers have of labor economics—what the workers themselves might call a simple matter of common sense. We will look at the views workers have of their employers and of how hiring and promotion decisions are made. We will examine their street-level understanding of human capital and social networks. The objective here is not just to describe their beliefs but also to provide a sense of where, in the universe of an individual's experience and learning, they come from.
Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 2021
This volume explores an expansive array of organizational imaginaries, or understandings of organ... more This volume explores an expansive array of organizational imaginaries, or understandings of organizational possibilities, with a focus on how collectivist-democratic organizations offer alternatives to conventional for-profit managerial enterprises. These include worker and consumer cooperatives and other enterprises that, to varying degrees, (1) emphasize social values over profit; (2) are owned not by shareholders but by workers, consumers, or other stakeholders; (3) employ democratic forms of managing their operations; and (4) have social ties to the organization based on moral and emotional commitments. The contributors to this volume examine how these enterprises generate solidarity among members, network with other organizations and communities, contend with market pressures, and enhance their larger organizational ecosystems. In this introductory chapter, we put forward an inclusive organizational typology whose continuums account for four key sources of variation – values, ownership, management, and social relations – and argue that enterprises fall between these two poles of the collectivist-democratic organization and the for-profit managerial enterprise. Drawing from this volume’s empirical studies, we situate these market actors within fields of competition and contestation shaped not just by state action and legal frameworks, but also by the presence or absence of social movements, labor unions, and meta-organizations. This typology challenges conventional conceptualizations of for-profit managerial enterprises as ideals or norms, reconnects past models of organizing among marginalized communities with contemporary and future possibilities, and offers activists and entrepreneurs a sense of the wide range of possibilities for building enterprises that differ from dominant models.
Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies, 2021
What has become of the blue-collar worker? Starting from an analysis of surplus population and th... more What has become of the blue-collar worker? Starting from an analysis of surplus population and the generalized spread of economic precarity in contemporary capitalism, this chapter argues that the working class encounters a labour market in which dislocations from paid work, social ties, and communal solidarity are the norm. Within this context, we can best understand the ways that workers experience capitalism’s recent transformations not in terms of whether they are employed or unemployed per se, but rather how disengaged they are from the previous regime of formal, regulated, long-term employment – that is, where exactly they stand within a complex structure of stratification that we call the division of non-labour. We explore how this condition of modern working-class life – a perpetual exposure to varying grades of insecurity and uncertainty – produces forms of trauma in these communities across a range of financial, psychological, and social dimensions. We conclude with a discussion of the sorts of political, economic, and cultural transformations that might alter this situation.
The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream, 2021
There are two sets of trade-offs that inevitably arise when a society embraces the American dream... more There are two sets of trade-offs that inevitably arise when a society embraces the American dream or related ideologies built upon meritocratic principles. One of those trade-offs comes at the expense of social equality. The other comes at the expense of individual fulfillment and meaning. I call these trade-offs the “cultural contradictions” of the American dream—to extend the classic phrasing in Daniel Bell’s book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism ([1976] 1996 ). If the American dream speaks to the cultural power and resonance of the ideal of meritocracy, a society’s uncompromising pursuit of that dream can bring about tensions that ultimately unravel it.
The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2021
Power is the ability to realize one's will in spite of resistance from others. Max Weber argued t... more Power is the ability to realize one's will in spite of resistance from others. Max Weber argued that three types of social resources – distributed on the basis of class (economic), status (sociocultural), and party (political) – could be employed to exert power. Karl Marx had earlier asserted the primacy of class, defined as a person's relationship to the means of production, but Weber complicated this picture through an analysis of the ways that social, cultural, and political considerations could both deepen and subvert class stratification. The global spread of democracy and capitalism initially increased social mobility and dispersed power more widely, including to groups that lacked economic resources but wielded power derived from prestige or the support of political organizations. In modern societies, however, elites have increasingly been able to parlay their economic advantages into cultural and political influence, renewing the interlocks between these spheres of power.
Papers by Victor T Chen
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2020
Poverty & Race, 2007
In our new book, The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America, we describe in detail ... more In our new book, The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America, we describe in detail the challenges faced by the near poor. These hard-working Americans struggle to support their families with little help from the government, even while their incomes fail to pay for adequate childcare, healthcare, housing and other foundations of a middle-class lifestyle. As we define it, the “Missing Class”—also known as the “near poor”—live on incomes between one and two times the poverty line. A household of four that brings in $20,000-$40,000 a year falls into this category. The near poor are a much larger group than the poor. More than 50 million Americans fall into this category, compared to 37 million who are poor. That means that nearly one out of three Americans is poor or near-poor.
Book Reviews by Victor T Chen
Contemporary Sociology, 2020
In Mobile Entrepreneurs, Katrin Sontag provides thought-provoking glimpses of the inner life of h... more In Mobile Entrepreneurs, Katrin Sontag provides thought-provoking glimpses of the inner life of highly skilled migrant entrepreneurs, who embrace risk and see work as “not work, but fun” (p. 13). A startup consultant in Switzerland talks about how the “American attitude” that “failure is part of success” has grown more popular in Europe, while an entrepreneur describes how risk makes for a fuller, less boring, life: “If you’re not afraid, then you’re missing something” (p. 75). Likewise, the work of building a company is “not work” because it is ultimately about building oneself, achieving what Sontag refers to as Passung—here, a personal “fit” that involves “meaningful self-production” (p. 93). As one respondent tells Sontag, the “entrepreneurial way of thinking” is about “mak[ing] something of yourself” and learning a “way of presenting yourself” (p. 54).
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Refereed Journal Articles by Victor T Chen
The Implications of Economic Inequality” interdisciplinary conference at Boston College on 9 April 2016, as well as portions of his book Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy, a sociological ethnography based on interviews and observations of unemployed autoworkers in Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Canada, during and after the Great Recession. The essay discusses four themes from this research. First, it provides a sociological understanding of how long-term unemployment and economic inequality are experienced by today’s less advantaged workers. Second, it illustrates how social policy can improve their circumstances. Third, it examines the limits of policy, and how dealing with inequality also requires changing the broader culture. Fourth, it makes the case for one possible approach to bring about that cultural change: a morality of grace.
Books by Victor T Chen
Their declining fortunes in recent decades tell us something about what the white-collar workforce should expect to see in the years ahead, as job-killing technologies and the shipping of work overseas take away even more good jobs. Cut Loose offers a poignant look at how the long-term unemployed struggle in today’s unfair economy to support their families, rebuild their lives, and overcome the shame and self-blame they deal with on a daily basis. It is also a call to action—a blueprint for a new kind of politics, one that offers a measure of grace in a society of ruthless advancement.
This Research in the Sociology of Organizations volume explores an expansive array of organizational imaginaries, or conceptions of organizational possibilities, with a focus on collectivist-democratic organizations that operate in capitalist markets but place more authority and ownership in the hands of stakeholders other than shareholders. These include worker and consumer cooperatives and other enterprises that, to varying degrees:
1. Emphasize social values over profit
2. Are owned not by shareholders but by workers, consumers, or other stakeholders
3. Employ democratic forms of managing their operations
4. Have social ties to the organization based on moral and emotional commitments
Organizational Imaginaries explores how these enterprises generate solidarity among members, network with other organizations and communities, contend with market pressures, and enhance their larger organizational ecosystems. By ensuring that organizations ultimately support and serve broader communities, collectivist-democratic organizing can move societies closer to hopeful “what if” and “if only” futures.
This volume is essential for researchers and students seeking innovative and egalitarian approaches to business and management.
Missing Class parents often work at a breakneck pace to preserve the progress they have made and are but one divorce or unexpected hospitalization away from sliding into poverty. Children face an even more perilous and uncertain future because their parents have so little time to help them with their schoolwork or guide them during their adolescent years. With little supervision, the younger generation often flounders in school, sometimes falling prey to the same problems that are prevalent in the much poorer communities that border Missing Class neighborhoods. Paradoxically, the very efforts that enabled parents to get ahead financially often inhibit their children from advancing; they are in real danger of losing what little ground their parents have gained.
The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America is an urgent and timely exploration that describes-through the experiences of nine families-the unique problems faced by this growing class of people who are neither working poor nor middle class. Katherine S. Newman and Victor Tan Chen trace where these families came from, how they’ve struggled to make a decent living, and why they’re stuck without a safety net. An eloquent argument for the need to think about inequality in a broader way, The Missing Class has much to tell us about whether the American dream still exists for those who are sacrificing daily to achieve it.
Book Chapters by Victor T Chen
Papers by Victor T Chen
Book Reviews by Victor T Chen
The Implications of Economic Inequality” interdisciplinary conference at Boston College on 9 April 2016, as well as portions of his book Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy, a sociological ethnography based on interviews and observations of unemployed autoworkers in Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Canada, during and after the Great Recession. The essay discusses four themes from this research. First, it provides a sociological understanding of how long-term unemployment and economic inequality are experienced by today’s less advantaged workers. Second, it illustrates how social policy can improve their circumstances. Third, it examines the limits of policy, and how dealing with inequality also requires changing the broader culture. Fourth, it makes the case for one possible approach to bring about that cultural change: a morality of grace.
Their declining fortunes in recent decades tell us something about what the white-collar workforce should expect to see in the years ahead, as job-killing technologies and the shipping of work overseas take away even more good jobs. Cut Loose offers a poignant look at how the long-term unemployed struggle in today’s unfair economy to support their families, rebuild their lives, and overcome the shame and self-blame they deal with on a daily basis. It is also a call to action—a blueprint for a new kind of politics, one that offers a measure of grace in a society of ruthless advancement.
This Research in the Sociology of Organizations volume explores an expansive array of organizational imaginaries, or conceptions of organizational possibilities, with a focus on collectivist-democratic organizations that operate in capitalist markets but place more authority and ownership in the hands of stakeholders other than shareholders. These include worker and consumer cooperatives and other enterprises that, to varying degrees:
1. Emphasize social values over profit
2. Are owned not by shareholders but by workers, consumers, or other stakeholders
3. Employ democratic forms of managing their operations
4. Have social ties to the organization based on moral and emotional commitments
Organizational Imaginaries explores how these enterprises generate solidarity among members, network with other organizations and communities, contend with market pressures, and enhance their larger organizational ecosystems. By ensuring that organizations ultimately support and serve broader communities, collectivist-democratic organizing can move societies closer to hopeful “what if” and “if only” futures.
This volume is essential for researchers and students seeking innovative and egalitarian approaches to business and management.
Missing Class parents often work at a breakneck pace to preserve the progress they have made and are but one divorce or unexpected hospitalization away from sliding into poverty. Children face an even more perilous and uncertain future because their parents have so little time to help them with their schoolwork or guide them during their adolescent years. With little supervision, the younger generation often flounders in school, sometimes falling prey to the same problems that are prevalent in the much poorer communities that border Missing Class neighborhoods. Paradoxically, the very efforts that enabled parents to get ahead financially often inhibit their children from advancing; they are in real danger of losing what little ground their parents have gained.
The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America is an urgent and timely exploration that describes-through the experiences of nine families-the unique problems faced by this growing class of people who are neither working poor nor middle class. Katherine S. Newman and Victor Tan Chen trace where these families came from, how they’ve struggled to make a decent living, and why they’re stuck without a safety net. An eloquent argument for the need to think about inequality in a broader way, The Missing Class has much to tell us about whether the American dream still exists for those who are sacrificing daily to achieve it.